Auto-arresting safety devices, sometimes referred to as strap lock devices, are safety systems commonly employed to prevent inadvertent falling of equipment and objects, notably gymnasium equipment. Perhaps one of the more common applications in which auto-arresting safety devices are employed is with basketball standards, and particularly those types of standards mounted and suspended from a ceiling or upper support, and that pivot from a use position to a raised storage position by way of a manual or motorized winch or crank system used to both raise and lower the standard, as well as to hold it in the upright stored position. In the event of a failure of the winch system (e.g., breaking of the support cables or failure of the winding mechanism, etc.) the supported equipment may fall, quickly accelerating into a downward motion that can present a highly dangerous situation. By employing an auto-arresting safety device, such falls are prevented as these devices activate to arrest the fall and prevent further movement of the object.
Once an auto-arresting safety device has been activated to arrest the fall of an object, it is not uncommon for these devices to be reset (either manually or automatically depending upon the type of device being used) and again be put into service. In many cases this is acceptable as long as the device has not experienced too great a load that would cause it to be inoperable, to fail, or to be less effective during a subsequent fall of the object. In many instances fall arrest indicators, such as flags, tabs, color coded devices, etc. are used to indicate that the device has been activated. However, such fall arrest indicators may be insufficient to maintain a safely operating device as these can be ignored or misunderstood. Indeed, upon activating to arrest a fall, if a prescribed or threshold load has been reached, such a device may no longer be safe for use. In practice, there is a reasonable probability that a person unqualified to determine the operational integrity of the device will deem it acceptable for continued operation. Or, such persons may decide that any device, no matter its condition or performance capability, is better in the interim than no device at all. In either case, such a flawed device may fail during a subsequent fall, resulting in the dangerous situation described above.